The Meta-Skills of High Stakes Poker with Garrett Adelstein
Garrett Adelstein joins Chris Sparks for Forcing Function Hour #9.
Garrett Adelstein is a force of nature in the world of high-stakes poker. He’s known for routinely raking in six-figure pots with his creative and aggressive style of play. Garrett is a fixture on poker's largest televised cash games such as Live at the Bike and Poker After Dark and he made an appearance on CBS’s Survivor Season 28: Cagayan.
When Garrett and Chris reached the highest limits of poker, they discovered that the best players are playing a completely different game. They call this the metagame. The game that transcends the conventional game. To win at the metagame, you need to develop meta-skills.
It’s high time to shine some light on the meta-skills which separate winners from the rest of the field. You won't find this in any book. Garrett and Chris unfold poker’s hidden dimensions: the dark matter which separates the "best" players from those who actually win the most money.
See below for the audio recording, resources mentioned, and conversation transcript.
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Resources and links mentioned:
The Forcing Function links:
Experiment Without Limits (peak performance workbook, free download)
Performance Assessment (quiz to reveal your greatest opportunity for growth)
To check out our previous Forcing Function Hour episodes, click here.
Topics:
(06:10): A critical mindset for poker
(14:43): Keeping the identity of someone who gets up and puts in the work intact
(19:54): Mental and physical preparation process look like for a high stakes game?
(32:57): Separating from the pack in really long sessions
(41:53): Limiting the force of ego
(45:51) Resetting to get back on track
(54:40): Q&A
Podcast Transcript:
Note: transcript edited slightly for clarity.
Chris (00:05): Welcome to Forcing Function Hour, a conversation series exploring the boundaries of peak performance. Join me, Chris Sparks, as I interview elite performers to reveal principles, systems, and strategies for achieving a competitive edge in business. If you are an executive or investor ready to take yourself to the next level, download my workbook at experimentwithoutlimits.com. For all episodes and show notes, go to forcingfunctionhour.com.Hey guys, and welcome to the ninth edition of Lunch Hour. Lunch Hour is a conversation series exploring the boundaries of high performance. My name is Chris Sparks, I'm the founder of the Forcing Function, and I’m your host for today. At Forcing Function, we offer executive performance training. We teach executives and investors how to multiply their output, improve their decision-making, and perform at optimal levels.
If you’d like to learn more, I’d encourage you to check out our workbook online, Experiment Without Limits. You can find that at forcingfunction.com/workbook. We also offer a Performance Assessment, a free quiz where we will reveal your biggest opportunity to improve your levels of productivity and performance. You can take that for free at forcingfunction.com/assessment.
If you enjoy today’s Lunch Hour, we’d encourage you to sign up for our monthly newsletter where we share upcoming events, with amazing guests like Garrett today. And that guest, Garrett, I’m incredibly honored to introduce.
For those of you guys who have been living under a rock, or maybe you're just less familiar with the poker world—those who are familiar know that Garrett is without a doubt one of the best No-Limit Hold ‘Em players in the world today, particularly in the live arena. I think of him as just a complete force of nature at the table. He’s really known for his creative and aggressive style of play. You might have seen him, as he's a fixture on poker's largest televised cash games such as Live At The Bike, and Poker After Dark. Garrett and I met through a good friend, David Malka—shout out to David—Garrett’s just one of my favorite people to see whenever I’m on the west coast. And it’s truly an honor and a privilege to have him on the show today.
I think that Garrett’s superpower is just his really, really rigorous style of thought. He's just really proficient at taking ideas to their logical conclusion. You can see by the way that he thinks today why he's so tough to outwit at the tables. Not someone that you want to be going deeper into a topic.
But I think that most importantly, he's an incredibly good human being, which those of you guys who play in the high stakes poker world know is a bit of a rarity. That there's this notion that you have to be absolutely ruthless, relentless. And I think Garrett is a great example of why this is not the case. He's been very public about the battles that he's had with depression, and he's helped hundreds of people with their private struggles. He's someone who is genuinely likable, someone that you actually want in your games, which is a real thing when you're playing in the live scene. And I think that he is kind of the rare combination of successful and happy. So successful, by cultural terms, someone who's done very well for himself. But there are a lot of people out there who have been very successful who you wouldn't necessarily want to change places with. So he has somehow been able to pull off this rare combination, both doing very well and being very happy for it.
So in today's topic, we're going to explore what I call the "meta-skills" of high-stakes poker, where we try to differentiate what separates the top one percent in the field from the top .001 percent. This is not just "How do you get good?" This is, "How do you become the absolute top of your profession, where there are lots of conventional ways to improve yourself?" And in poker, this is especially true, where there's tons of debates on who the best players are, usually who is most proficient at the style known as GTO. But there is a very clear divergence across all fields who most would consider the best, and those who actually win the most. And that's that divergence that we're going to be exploring today. In my opinion, this comes down to the meta-skills of poker, and that's what we're going to be exploring today.
So there'll be two types of meta-skills we're going to be talking about. First will be considered "mental game." So, strengthening your self-awareness, your mental toughness, your just plain old discipline, your ability to make good decisions under conditions of uncertainty. But also in a lot of the world, they would call these "soft skills." So, in poker, everyone knows that the game selection is incredibly important. But how do you get into good games? The power of your reputation. Both, you know, people getting out of your way, but also your ability to get paid off when you have a good hand. And then finally, just plain emotional intelligence. So this is both understanding how your emotions play a role in your own decision-making, but also recognizing when other people are getting a little bit emotional in their decision-making and making adjustments accordingly.
Today I hope you'll walk away from this conversation with a little bit better of an idea of how to develop and apply these meta-skills so that you can win more often. Timeline for today: Garrett and I are going to be talking in a fireside chat for about forty minutes, and then we're going to be opening it up for Q&A. I encourage you, if anything we say sounds interesting, stands out, completely disagree, utilize the chat. We're happy to keep that debate going there. Remember to turn on "all attendees." We're going to be taking Q&A for the last twenty minutes via the Q&A function. You can see that at the bottom bar there. So anyone can submit questions. And if you see a question that you're interested in hearing more about, make sure to upvote that, because I'm going to be choosing the questions that have been upvoted the most. Everyone's favorite question: we're going to be going for seventy-five minutes today, so 1:15 Eastern. If you have to leave early, no worries. We're going to be recording this, and we'll be sending it out to you in a Monday email. Without further ado, Garrett, thank you so much for being here. It's truly an honor, and you know, really, really excited to hear what you have to say today.
Garrett (05:59): Well, thank you for those very kind words, Chris. As you well know, you've been a mentor to me much more than the other way around, but I'll take the compliment nevertheless.
Chris (6:10): Awesome. So let's just dive in. So I'm curious, what do you think . . . If you had to pick one, what's that critical trait or mindset that you think helps separate someone in a competitive field like poker?
Garrett (06:25): Right. Yeah, I think . . . I'll give you a very short answer first, which will come across as incredibly elementary, but then we'll go from there. But I would say want, and working smart. So let me elaborate on both of those. I remember the first time I read an article by Mark Manson. I think it's called "The Most Important Question In Your Life." And he discusses how everybody wants to look good, everybody wants to retire early, everybody wants to be in a very healthy marriage, but very few people truly want it. Right? And to truly want any of those things, it requires the deep drive, desire, and want to put in great effort every single day. And there's no cheat codes, there's no shortcut to life, there's no shortcut to any of one's macro or usually even micro goals in life. You just gotta put in the hard work every day. And probably the book that connects the most with me on that is David Goggins Can't Hurt Me. Although he discusses it oftentimes as it relates to athletic feats, he reminds me every day of, you know, how bad do I want it, basically.
You know, you were talking about what separates the one percent versus like a fraction of that, and Goggins refers to that as being "uncommon amongst the uncommon." Not the one in a hundred, but the one in ten thousand. And so every day, I wake up and I challenge myself. In my mind, my identity is at risk every single morning when I wake up. And that's sort of discussed quite a bit in Atomic Habits, which is a very . . . That book obviously is insanely popular these days, but I do love that aspect of it. You know, if I'm thinking about skipping a run, if I'm thinking about putting less work into my poker game or my relationship or whatever on any given day, I feel like my identity is at risk. Who do I want to be? Do I want to be a good runner, or a truly elite runner? Do I want to be a good husband, or you know, the one-in-ten-thousand husband who is willing to give everything for his wife?
So that's where the want comes. The second part is just sort of working smart. And I'll apply this one more specifically to poker. Poker is such an incredibly complex game. And if someone were to ask me, especially in 2020, "How do I win money playing poker?", the answer is just so complicated and so diverse, and I think many people don't really know where to get started. I can give you sort of a basic example of how I don't think is the best way to approach it. Right? So a lot of what are generally considered the world's best poker players, they're just studying sims or simulations around the clock. Right? And that makes them very technically proficient, but their ability to execute is quite a bit different from that, for one. But for two, even if one was the best at acquiring the knowledge as well as the execution they're after, there's almost no doubt in my mind that without a variety of other—as you call it—"soft skills" that they would earn even at a fraction of the rate of those who have actually earned the most money in poker. You know?
And so the concept of working smart . . . I think it applies to just so many different fields, but it can never be more true than in poker. And it's complicated, too, because you can work smart in an unethical fashion, potentially, and earn a lot in poker in the short term, you know, but for me, it's like ninety-eight out of a hundred opportunities that come along just don't fit my criteria ethically. You know, so to be able to work super smart and be able to look at yourself in the mirror every night and feel really great about all the choices you make professionally, I think is a particularly challenging one in poker.
Chris (10:51): So let's start there. Obviously, you know, you've been in the game for a long time, and like you said, there are lots of short-term opportunities for profit, but if you're looking to stick around for the long term, both to maximize your bottom line, but also, like you said, the ability to sleep well, look at yourself in the mirror, and generally feel happy and fulfilled off the table, requires playing this long game. I'd love to hear a little bit more in this context of working smart, things that you've done which maybe short-term you left some money on the table but in the long run have led to perhaps more profit, but especially more happiness.
Garrett (11:37): Sure. Yeah, I mean there's several that come to the top of my head during COVID. There's a whole bunch of poker capitalists and entrepreneurs that have popped up or whatnot during this time, and they're running illegal home games, they're running more specifically illegal online games, where they're playing on play-money sites, but you know, they're playing for real money. And you know, I just think there's several things ethically that I don't feel great about. And also in many ways, it's just like a job I don't really want. So you have to really prey on the losing players. Like I try . . . In all interactions I have with all people, winning players, losing players, whatever, to make sure that the relationship comes first. You know? So to me, that always just comes naturally to me. If someone's a losing player, but they're insufferable, I'm just not going to have a relationship with them. But you know, quite often I'm good friends with a lot of world-class players, and I'm good friends with a lot of losing players who despite not having great technical proficiency at poker, they're great human beings and super interesting, and whatever.
So I think the point being, I don't really want to have sort of that card in my arsenal at this point in my life, you know, in terms of looking at human beings as pawns on a chessboard and how I can utilize them to my advantage. You know, I don't want to have to try to collect money from people in these online games and, you know, I don't wanna . . . I could just go on and on and on, but I think just the gist is there's a whole bunch of grey areas in the poker economy in 2020. Even like if we talk about building live games, there's just so many things that you see most game builders do that I just don't feel comfortable with, and so as such I just sit on the sidelines, when it comes to that.
Chris (14:04): Yeah. I think a commonality there around working smart is that you know clearly what's a yes for you and clearly what's a no. And a lot of times it comes down to that ethical compass, and where people get into these grey areas is they aren't clear where they stand on these issues, and thus things tend to erode over time. But what you said that was super interesting was that, "My identity is at risk." There's this notion in the startup world of keeping your identity small, that the more things you identify with, the more . . . You become fragile.
Garrett (14:42): Right.
Chris (14:43): But it seems in this instance of showing up and putting in the work every day, even when you don't want to, even when it sucks, has been a pretty key part of your success. Right? I imagine a lot of poker, especially in the live arena, is just showing up, 'cause you don't know what's going to happen on that particular day. Let's say the previous day you know, you had a really tough session, you took a big loss, or you didn't play particularly well. What do you do to make sure that you keep that identity of someone who gets up and puts in the work intact?
Garrett (15:18): Right, yeah. I love this question. These are the days where . . . If my identity is at risk daily, it's exponentially more important the day after a big loss. I think one of the more interesting psychological components of playing very high stakes poker is sort of dealing with losses. You know, I'll play various days where I'll lose amounts of money that are just truly mind-boggling. And what I choose to do the next day I think often sets the course for how the next several weeks, even months, you know, in my life can look. In the past, I wasn't always excellent at this, to say the least. You know, I could go and hibernate for months after a huge loss. I'd be like, "Whatever. I don't need to work, I don't need to play." And then I just made a series of poor choices for months straight.
Fortunately, with your coaching and a great psychologist and a bunch of other work over the last several years, you know, that almost never happens, there. So to answer your question more directly, what that looks like for me is just making sure I complete my morning ritual the following morning. I think a more interesting question to me isn't, "How can I play well the next time I play?" but, "How can I live a meaningful life the following day?" And that's sort of been the focus of my life the last half-decade. Not, "How can I earn more?" but, "How can I live with peace to a greater extent each day?"
And so my morning ritual, very briefly, just includes you know, waking up, coffee, clean meal, take the dogs running, meditate, you know, and then go from there. And it's like . . . Once I accomplish those, whatever it is, four things, I already just feel like such a champion. You know, like nothing . . . It doesn't matter what comes at me the rest of the day. I feel like I've already won and I've already sort of conquered this battle with myself and have proven to myself that my identity is someone who is very emotionally resilient. Someone who, no matter what happens to me the day before, is going to get up and do what he needs to do to be the best version of himself.
And so you know, it's funny, all these sorts of skills like, very coincidentally I think translate to the poker table quite a bit. Because if I have another big game the next day, well, you know, I've completed my morning ritual, I'm in a totally different headspace at that point, and I'm ready to compete, I'm ready to fight, I'm ready to execute.
Chris (18:07): Yeah. I love that notion of emotional resilience and just living with peace. And let's be clear, your poker career . . . Whatever someone does for a living, that's subservient to just living a good life. We're not on this earth to make money, it's just one aspect of what allows us to support the people we love and do what we want to do, and I think a lot of people confuse that instrumental goal for a terminal goal. But what I find really fascinating is I see time and time again that those who have, let's say, alignment off the table, they're living lives of peace, they take care of themselves, they avoid what I refer to as "lifestyle leaks," you know, doing things off the table, moral ambiguities, bad habits, et cetera, all of those things show up in their play in really kind of nuanced ways. And I do think that's a true separator, that it seems your life off the table is a reflection of your results on the table. Is that something that you've experienced?
Garrett (19:15): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I couldn't agree more with that. I certainly could think of periods in my life where a lot of things were kind of in shambles and it without question affects my execution quite a bit. And you know, I'm very, very fortunate in so many ways in my life. 'Stability' is a word that comes to mind, you know, first and foremost. 'Balance.' Because I excel at these topics or whatnot to a much greater extent now, it allows me to perform at the highest level I can professionally, as well.
Chris (19:54): Talk to me about that preparation process. You know, you talked about the morning ritual a little bit. I mean, at this point you've gotten pretty comfortable being in front of the cameras, but I imagine there's still a little bit of butterflies. You're sitting down with big stacks of cash in front of you, playing against pretty tough players in front of the cameras. What's that mental and physical preparation process look like?
Garrett (20:17): Right. You know, interestingly it's like the cameras just become second nature, when you're on them for a while, but I can certainly relate initially when I started playing on streams, like, it's very nerve-wracking. What it really makes you do is you just freeze up. Like you just don't want to bluff nearly as often as you should. You just don't want to make a mistake, basically, and I think that's what leads to a lot of people under bluffing or whatnot initially. But you know, I'll steal from LeBron here when it comes to preparation. He says the same thing over and over, but he always says, "You know what, I put in the work and I'll live with the results." And I, you know—although every athlete has said something more or less the same over the course of time—I just love that so much, and I think that that's a real differentiator between myself and a lot of people at the table. I'm willing to make tragic errors. I'm willing to be just terribly wrong. I'm willing to do something that a poker computer simulation would never advocate doing based on exploiting a player's specific tendencies. Or my perception of their specific tendencies, which could be wrong. Right?
But the point is, I put in so much work and so much blood, sweat, and tears into poker not just from an effort standpoint, but like I said, working smart, that I'm willing to just get out there and do sort of what I need to do. So that's where the preparation sort of comes from. You know, on the day of a big game, whether it's a stream or not, I don't really do anything different. That's the interesting thing, because my morning ritual is just so rock solid that it kind of is what it is. But I would say I'll generally have a brief conversation with myself as I drive to the casino where, you know, a little pep talk, if you will.
There's so many things that we're talking about here, Chris, that I know that I'm very fortunate to either genetically or environmentally been blessed with a variety of skills. And so one of those skills is just great self-belief. You know, and a lot of that comes from childhood, so I'm so fortunate that I was given that. So on that drive to the casino, there will certainly be some positive self-talk. I'll say, you know, like, "You have out-worked everyone you're going to play against today. You live better to execute better than anyone when pressure is at its highest." It doesn't even matter if it’s true, like if someone can objectively measure that, right? It doesn't matter whether that's true. I deeply, deeply believe, and because I believe it, I'm convinced that that has a very positive impact on my results.
And you know, especially in poker, not to get too deep into it, but if you're playing a game that's much bigger than usual and you get into a hand and I find it to be correct to bluff off a quarter-million dollars in this hand or something, right, a lot of people don't have that button. They can't do it. It's just too scary. And I think the only way one can really muster up the courage to do that, I think just comes from the deep belief that what they're doing is correct. And then if and when ('cause definitely it goes wrong plenty of the time) you're able to forgive yourself and move on and make peace with it.
I think that's what . . . A lot of people live their life in fear. Even at the poker table. You would think high-stakes poker players would be some of the most fearless people alive, and maybe they are compared to the general population, but there are wide, wide ranges in terms of the level of fear people play with when they're playing the biggest games, and the amount of money you can win or lose on this day is ten times greater than what you're typically used to.
Chris (24:49): Garrett, there's so much wisdom there. So I think there's really a lot that up and coming players can take away from that. A couple things that I wanted to underline that I find particularly interesting: the way that it really hit home, for me, this notion of self-belief, is that you have this continuum. And on one end of the continuum, you have, let's say, full confidence. Like, "I am a hundred percent confident that I am the best player at this table and like everything that I do is perfect." And you have, okay, after the session, after the cameras are off, you go over those hands and be like, "Let's assume that I played every single hand badly. How did I play that hand badly? How could I have played it better?" This is like, full inquiry. And that the wisdom is that both thinking hats can be incredibly beneficial, but you have to know when to wear which hat. When you're sitting down at the table against other players, it's not the time to question, "Hey, am I actually a winning player? Do I deserve to be here?"
There's a time and a place to question everything, but you have to know when that place is. And there's a lot of wisdom in being able to separate those two mindsets.
And I just love what you said, because I think a lot of people don't fully appreciate that the game gets exponentially harder every year. So, I refer to this as “the Red Queen Effect," which comes from Alice In Wonderland, is that you have to run as fast as you can just to remain in the same place. It's like, if you're not growing you're falling behind. You're gonna go extinct. And so you need to find ways to keep the game interesting and to keep exploring things. And if you start to just fall into what I find is a trap of, "I found a way to play that works, I'm just gonna keep doing that over and over again," you stop growing. You weaken as a player, and you get passed by. And it comes from this willingness to look like a complete idiot by doing something that's just completely unconventional and possibly wrong, but it's through that exploration and discovery that you stumble upon things that are new and work and actually can be a differentiator.
Garrett (27:08): Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, I couldn't agree more with what you just said, and I'm glad you highlighted it. There is an endless sea of poker players who have that sort of confidence that I just described irrationally, and all of the time. Right? And you described it perfectly, where when you're at the table, self-belief is everything. The moment you leave the table . . . And you have to. It's not like part of our makeup to be both of these things. To at that point be very humble, and very self-aware, and be able to take a deep dive in terms of what you did correctly and what you did incorrectly. You rarely see a poker player who's exceptional at both skills, because it's just not the way our brains are wired.
And so I couldn't agree more in terms of how important that is, although when I'm playing my belief is sky-high. I always have a scale that I run with my fiancée after a session, you know, just, "one to ten, how well did I play, how well did I run?" Just to give her a feel for how it went, you know? And I mean, it is very rare I give myself a number higher than seven in terms of how well I played, you know. You have to figure out a way to do both, and I really think that concept too can apply to all of your listeners who don't play poker as well. When you have sort of big moments in your professional life . . . Or any part of your life. Maybe something big in your personal life or whatnot, too. I think it's critical that you deeply believe in yourself in that moment, and then after, when it's time for reflection, you have the self-awareness to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to be better next time.
Chris (29:04): Yeah. What I'm hearing is that really the critical skill is self-awareness here, and that what you draw your attention to . . . Right? And so we see what we're looking for. If you want to create that narrative of, "Oh, I ran so bad, and those players are awful, and next time things are going to be different," you'll easily find examples of that.
Garrett (29:23): Yeah.
Chris (29:24): And if you're looking for examples of, "Hey, I might have played this hand a little bit differently and it might have gone better," you'll clearly find examples of that as well. And so there's a lot of power in just the simple one to ten scale. I always tell clients, like, if you can put a number on something, then you can identify things that will take that number up or down, that will change your conviction level. And so if you say, "Hey, I played a seven out of ten," then the follow-up question is, "Well, what could I have done to get myself to an eight?"
Garrett (29:52): Yeah.
Chris (29:53): And by starting to ask yourself these questions you get yourself out of the trap of, "Oh, I did everything I could and I just got unlucky." There's always a way to improve. And that's the key, is you're always looking for ways to improve. And it's not a challenge to yourself. It's like, "Oh, I'm not bad," but like, "Oh, I always want to improve." And that's that key part of the identity that you're talking about.
Garrett (30:14): Absolutely. Yeah, I think Tom Brady says, like, "Yeah, I still haven't played a perfect game, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop trying every single time." And again, I think that applies really well to life. It's been an interesting ride for me. A lot of people always ask me, "How did you acquire this mindset or these sort of thought processes?" Right? And I mean really it came from having great financial success at a young age and still being terribly unhappy. You know, not many people are blessed with both of those things happening to them, so getting to that point . . . It's like, obviously you see plenty of people who are miserable their whole life, but I think quite a lot of people, if they can do both of those things, acquire a lot of wealth and be very unhappy, usually, they're going to follow on a path for, "Okay, how do I smile more?" And so to me, it's not just about trying to play the perfect game every time I sit down at the table, but trying to be better at everything that matters to me every single day. And for me that's been sort of a big component of why I wake up each day.
And yeah, 'cause for a while I didn't know the answer to that: "Why would I wake up tomorrow?" And that's sort of related to some depression issues too that I used to struggle with quite a bit. I just never struggle with that question anymore, because I have so many answers, but one of them is, "I want to be better today. I want to be a better husband, I want to be a better brother, I want to be a better friend, I want to be a better runner," and on, and on, and on.
Chris (32:00): Yeah. I like to tell entrepreneurs, in particular, that their biggest bottleneck is having a good reason to get out of bed in the morning, because it does create an issue where, "Hey, I don't need to do anything. I'm my own boss, I have enough, I can live on that beach in Thailand and be just fine," and needing to continually find those reasons to keep growing and to get out of bed and to put in the work. And a lot of it comes down to that mindset.
A couple of those names that you mentioned, like, LeBron James, Tom Brady, I think a lot of people would recognize, "Hey, these are players who, as the game goes on, they get stronger." They start to distance themselves from the pack in the fourth quarter. I don't think a lot of people realize these televised poker streams, maybe you're filming for four or five hours, but a lot of people think, "Hey, the cameras turn off and everyone just packs up and goes home—”
Garrett (32:56): No.
Chris (32:57): But a lot of times these games go on for twelve, sixteen, twenty-four hours. And I imagine that you see yourself as this fourth-quarter type of player. What do you think helps you to separate yourself from the pack in these really long sessions?
Garrett (33:11): Yeah, another good question. Definitely a key component, I think, of earning at the highest level in the biggest games is, you know, unlike sort of the typical 5/10 game that kind of goes around the clock and thus a lot of times your hourly isn't changing too much, you know, in the biggest high-stakes games, my hourly can be some exponentially higher number on hour eighteen or even hour forty-four, you know, versus the first few hours of the game. And you know, I again just want to go back to how bad do you want it? There's actually a book about running that's called How Bad Do You Want It? that I love too, and the point is, badly.
Like, when I'm just . . . I can't even see straight, everyone's tired, that's . . . There's something inside me that I've always had, and I'm very fortunate to have it, that's when I go into a bit of psycho, Mortal Kombat-like "finish him" type mode. When no one else can even keep their eyes open. Like we're on hour forty-four, you know, and it's weird, because the human brain will mess at you at this point. Like you won't think it matters as much as it mattered to you on hour one or hour six, but building the mental strength to know, "No, not only is it as important, it's that much more important." Right? You have an opportunity to capitalize here because people are playing poorly or the game has gotten bigger or often both, that you know, like . . . I would say something like from hours twelve-plus, in my poker career, right? So from the twelfth hour all the way on to when the session ends, I would have to think that well over half of my profits have come from those times.
And it could be something egregious like seventy-five percent. Which is probably mind-boggling to a lot of poker players here, like, "I never even get to hour thirteen. How is almost all the money you—" And I think that that's always just been something that's been deep inside me, even when I had a lot of mental health struggles and stuff like that. I think from a very young age, I just had this incredible fear of being ordinary, and I've tried to channel that back a bit in recent years to live with a bit more peace, but I think for most people I think challenging themselves to be extraordinary, to be uncommon amongst the uncommon, is generally the path you want to take. I just . . . I don't know what it is, but I see ninety-nine people in a room, and I just say, "I don't want to be anything like you. I want to do something totally different." And, yeah. So.
Chris (36:26): Man, I love that. I have to pull on that thread. So I imagine you can start to see, like, I think the studies show, "Hey, after even hour three our decision-making rapidly deteriorates."
Garrett (36:40): For sure.
Chris (36:41): And I think something that's important to emphasize, particularly in poker but in a lot of competitive fields . . . Say, investing, business, et cetera. It's not absolute skill. It's relative skill, where it doesn't matter how good you are on an absolute level, it's how good are you on a relative level, you can either be the best player in the world and play against the toughest players and, where, hey. It's very possible if you're in the toughest game in the world, you can be the sixth-best player in the world and be a losing player because relatively you're not the best. On the other hand, I like to say, "Hey, you can be a Little Leaguer playing in a T-Ball league and you're MVP every year." That, hey, it's this relative skill. And so as you see, people start to deteriorate as the session goes on, hour ten, hour sixteen, it doesn't matter as much that you are getting worse, it's that you're not getting worse as quickly as everyone else, so on a relative level that gap is widening.
And so I just have to ask, what do you start to see from other players where you can tell that they're starting to fade? And I imagine it, you start to like lick your chops a little bit, it's like, "All right, I know that I'm not playing my best, but I can know these guys are definitely not playing their best." Are there any signs that you start to see?
Garrett (38:03): Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, you know, to your point I just want to quickly elaborate, it's just so spot-on. Like, you have a lot of the best players in the world, and they just play excellent four-hour sessions and then they quit and then they wake up and do the same thing the next day. It is just so incredibly counter-productive if your goal is to make as much money as you can. You know, if your goal is to be the best for four hours, then yeah, then you win? You know? But, go ahead.
Chris (38:29): Yeah. You would think . . . So they looked at cab drivers.
Garrett (38:34): Yeah.
Chris (38:35): And so what cab drivers do, is they drive until they hit their quota for the day. Let's say they want to make a hundred dollars a day. And so what happens a lot of times is some days maybe it's rainy or there's tons of traffic, it might take them ten or twelve hours to hit those hundred bucks. They keep going until they hit the hundred bucks. And then some days, maybe it's New Year's Eve or something, they do two long-distance fares and then they get a hundred bucks and then they quit. And the idea that your hourly is so variable, and a lot of times people sacrifice profit for the sake of convenience, 'cause they want to be able to play when most convenient to them and they want to play short sessions, and that if you really, really want to win, it's like you said. What are you willing to give up? What price are you willing to pay? How hard are you willing to go?
And you know, a lot of people out there, hey, they're very, very good, but they're quitting when they hit their hundred dollars, when there's lots more money on the table.
Garrett (39:31): Yeah. Yeah, it's super interesting to me, you know, just 'cause it's just so different than the way that I'm wired, but yet I have an awareness that that makes up at least nine out of ten people. You know? But to answer your question specifically, the first thing you often see is autopilot at the poker table, where people in a variety of spots are playing very balanced mixed strategies in a variety of spots, but like on hour seventeen or whatever, they just don't have the bandwidth to be able to execute these complex mixed strategies in a wide variety of spots.
The other one you see related to autopilot is between hands they're zoning out, they're sitting on their phone, you know, whatever the case. Like honestly, all that shit just makes me so hungry. You know, like I'm like, this guy's sitting here on Tinder swiping or whatever, and I couldn't be more locked in. You know, it doesn't matter that my net worth might be 100x this guy. I want it so much more than him every fucking day, including today. So there's all sorts of little things like that. But those are a couple, at least specifically, at the poker table.
Chris (40:55): I think this is a good question, to put in the question from Aneesh. So, you know, obviously being in the spotlight, playing on TV, there's lots of haters out there, lots of armchair quarterback players who say, "Oh, like, Garrett doesn't play all that great." Right? Everyone who thinks they're entitled to an opinion. And you've been pretty public that, "Hey, I don't care what anyone thinks." Even it's—it's probably for the best if people don't think that I'm good. So hey, go ahead, hate away. What have you done—I know ego is so, so costly, especially when we're in our younger years, we care so much about what other people think.
A lot of times I see people caring more about what other people think than actually making money. There was a site back in the day, PokerTableRatings, and people would post publicly, "Oh, I've made way more than the site says." Is that really what you want to—do you really care that much?
Garrett (41:52): Right.
Chris (41:53): What have you done to limit the force of your ego and just care less what other people think? I think it ties into what you were saying before about being comfortable about being incredibly wrong.
Garrett (42:06): Right. These are really tough skills, and again this stuff, I was not particularly strong in, you know, in my twenties. But I think honestly . . . I mean, I'm gonna get corny here for a minute, but I think it comes down first and foremost to self-love. You know? I think a lot of ego or at least outward sort of bravado comes from a place of insecurity. And there was a time where I didn’t have a lot of self-love, and now I do. You know, now I like myself, and I'm sort of at peace with who I am and where I'm strong and where I'm weak, and it just makes it a lot easier. You know, I think the question is a bit challenging because there's probably a lot of people watching who go, "Well yeah, if I were you, if I had your life, this, that, I too wouldn't be so insecure, I too wouldn't be like trying to tell anyone who would listen, ‘Hey, look, I'm good at poker.’" You know?
So it is a bit tough to answer. Certainly, you're right, advertising yourself as a good player is not an intelligent strategy in the live poker arena. I guess I'll kind of leave that there. I don't think I have a great answer to that one. Sorry.
Chris (43:35): Well, I think let's go into the self-love. You mentioned that this has been an area of growth for you. Maybe in the past, maybe earlier in your career, this wasn't the case, right? Where you were successful, but not happy. Is there anything that's worked for you in developing this self-love?
Garrett (43:57): Yeah. I mean a lot of that would kind of just dive into mental health stuff, but certainly, my psychologist was very important, my work with you on productivity and your coaching and mentorship played a big role. Meditation played a big role in that. Let's see. What else? Did I say cognitive behavioral therapy? Cognitive behavioral therapy as a specific subset of psychotherapy has been sort of absolutely critical, you know? But I'll reference one thing that you taught me, because everyone I tell it to is just blown away, and they love it so much. And it goes back to what you were talking about in terms of quantifying things. Of course, that's just the way our brains work and many poker players' work, to quantify things. But when I quantified something as incredibly abstract as like, "What was the quality of my day," or "How would I rank my productivity," let's say, which is a bit more objective of a question, on a scale from one to ten. And what you helped me to realize was I was having two types of days: zero and ten. Right?
Chris (45:13): Mm-hmm.
Garrett (45:14): And three out of ten days were 10/10. And yeah, 10/10 days are very impressive, and not many people can touch them, but my average score was three out of ten. Like, that is a very inefficient life, you know? And so our work really helped me a lot to raise that slowly but surely to . . . I mean now I'm probably at like an eight and a half or whatever average out of ten. But that's because I'm not trying to get to ten out of ten every day. I'm happy with the sevens, I'm happy with the eights, and I just really want to make sure I get to a five each day.
Chris (45:51): Hmm. Yeah, I think that raising the floor on our happiness, on the decisions we make, is usually the highest leverage. Where usually everyone wants to hit that ten out of ten every day, but that's what leads to burnout and regression to the mean, and the perfectionism that prevents this long-term consistency that leads to the long-term results. I mean it seems that self-awareness has been really huge for you. Let's say that you're at the table and you witness yourself making a bad decision. Maybe you feel you're on the verge of tilting. Take us through that self-talk or that moment where you try to reset yourself and get yourself back on track.
Garrett (46:41): Sure. Sure, yeah. There's a few questions I ask myself in this spot. I say, "Okay, here's where we're at. Here's the status of your life in this moment. You made an error. It cost you X thousand dollars. Right?" I have two choices now. I can forgive myself and execute to the best of my ability on this next hand, or I can punish myself and play this next hand poorly too. Right? And then I'll think about how I'll feel tomorrow if I go with option two. And I recognize that there was a time in my life where I had many self-destructive tendencies. Many. And this was just like a manifestation of one of them. You know? And so now I just make the choice. I choose not to cause myself further harm and further pain.
Another thing I would say is just gratitude. You know, I use gratitude all day every day, wherever I'm at. But when I'm not running well or getting unlucky in poker, but more specifically not playing well, the first thing I think about is, it doesn't matter. Like, I'm fine. You know, I'm so grateful for my life that I'm not even concerned that I just lost like, again, however many thousand in that hand. You know? And although when I get home I will be very upset, because I'm very hard on myself in post-session review, again, because I'm always striving to play that perfect game that I'll never actually play, in that moment I know the self-hatred will not serve me in any way, so I just think about all of the good in my life and how fortunate I am and all the things I'm so grateful for, and very few of those are related to financial success anyway.
Chris (48:44): Yeah, that's brilliant. I think that this meta-skill of, "How can you have empathy with your future self" is one that we try to build throughout our lives, because so many times at the poker table and in life, our short-term desires become divorced from our long-term goals, and we do things which are counterproductive or even self-sabotaging because we lose track of what we are here to accomplish. And so just reminding yourself, I love this question, of "How will I feel about this tomorrow? Let's make a decision now that I'll feel good about when I look back on this." Because every decision we make echoes into eternity. It's like, there's no harm . . . The results of any given session or day don't really matter. And it's like, hey. If we tilt off of another buy-in it does not really matter all that much. What's really harmful is that every time we tilt, we make it more likely we're going to tilt in that situation in the future. We have rewarded, we've reinforced taking that action. And so the more we can say, "All right, I am going to make choices now in the moment that I am going to feel good about in the future," that creates a little bit more separation, which is generally all we need. That kind of gap between stimulus and response.
And so what I'm hearing from you is just creating a little bit of space for intentionality. It's like slowing down your breath, taking a moment to say, "All right, I feel myself racing, I feel these emotions coming up. Let's take a step back from that for a second."
Garrett (50:25): Yeah, absolutely. The breath, again, that's key. Part of me taking some breaths is like . . . I'm just grateful to be alive. I know it's so corny, but that's one of the first things when I take some breaths to just try and chill out. You know? But yeah, I mean it really does calm me down a lot. You mentioned a few things there that are touched on in Atomic Habits, too, where good habits are reinforced, and over time you get better and better at them, but so are bad habits. You know?
And you know, if you're like a nineteen-year-old poker player listening to what I'm saying, I think being able to implement this consistently and successfully is going to be very challenging. I think you have to learn a lot of this through experience. Whether it's like, tilting off buy-in after buy-in or having seven too many shots and everything in between. For me, I really had to learn the hard way by making a lot of really bad choices over and over again, that "Hey, this isn't worth it." You know? Like I want to like myself as much as I can tomorrow, and so I want to make choices today that give me the best opportunity to do that. And for a lot of people maybe that's not that hard, but for me, it took thirty years to start to do that with a decent level of success.
Chris (51:52): I agree. I think it's very difficult to really internalize these things without that personal experience, and I think it seems like the primary lever we have is how many times do we have to pay tuition for the same lesson? It's like we're . . . It's gonna happen, but how many times does it need to happen before we start to change how we're reacting to it? And what I hear that I love, which I think is worth emphasizing, is how much you emphasize changing that narrative. I think that it's very, very easy to fall into these narratives where we become the victim, where things are happening to us rather than the other way around. And what I love is that you recognize there is so much that's outside of your control. Thus you have a one to ten for play, and a one to ten for how you ran, and you don't conflate those two. But even though so much of the luck in life is out of your control, what is in control is your response to that. And so that's the narrative that you take to heart: "Hey, these things happen but this is what I did because of that." I think that that's really powerful.
Garrett (53:04): Yeah. Definitely. The whole victim mentality is such a turnoff for me. It's been hard for me to even maintain close relationships with people who feel that way, because I've always just felt like . . . First of all, I'm fine just accepting that I've gotten lucky or ran hotter than anyone else on Earth. I just wake up every morning saying that. I don't know if it's true. It doesn't really matter. You know, whatever it is, it's totally out of my control, but what is in my control is I can make a series of choices today that I can feel good about. And I think it'd be naïve to feel that peace I live with is completely uncorrelated with that great effort I put in every day.
You know, it almost certainly has something to do with it, and like in terms of the percentage of it, I just don't care, honestly. I'm happy to play the quantitative guessing game on so many things, but that one just doesn't interest me. Because I don't want to do anything that puts me at risk of going back to that place where I'm unable to consistently have meaningful and fulfilling days. You know, that's really just everything in my life is about that. Like if I can't do that, there's no way I can be a good husband or friend or anything else. You know, and so I'm never gonna tell myself any story that stops me from pushing forward, however true it may be.
Chris (54:40): Garrett, man, I love this so much. You know I can go on about this for hours. Yeah, thank you so much, as always, for sharing. I want to hand things off to Q&A, because we have a lot of really good questions that I want to give an opportunity to answer. So you know, feel free to evolve these questions to your own liking, as far as what you'd like to answer.
Garrett (55:04): Sure.
Chris (55:05): So first question, I'm gonna paraphrase this as, "How do you become someone who others like playing with?" You know, you can see the opposite of this, someone wearing the noise-canceling headphones, not talking, not acknowledging, every hand is like the final table at the World Series of Poker. How do you become someone who others want to play with?
Garrett (56:32): Right. Yeah. So the first thing I want to say about this is, I feel a lot of poker players specifically answer this question as though it can be solved like a piosim. And it's just not how it works. And I'm empathetic to the fact that many poker players who are exceptional at the technical aspects of the game, and that's what allows them to do well, they struggle socially or on an emotional intelligence level, or on an autism scale, even, that they even have to ask a question like this. I understand that. But I don't think it's something that you study, or at least it's not something I would know how to study. For me, it came from honestly just a lot of work on myself. How can I become someone who's more interested in other human beings? I think that's really the question. And you have to do it for the right reasons. If you go, "Okay, I'm gonna teach myself how to be interested in others, because then I'm gonna make some more money," I don't think that's gonna work, and also that makes me sick to my stomach even thinking about someone going about it in that way. You know?
And so I think I just spent a lot of time in my life on personal development in terms of, "How can I be a better version of myself? How can I treat others better?" And to take another thing I learned from you, "How can I dig to find what this person is an expert witness at?" You know, but it's not gonna happen if you're not genuinely interested in them.
Chris (57:14): Yeah, I love that. The notion that this is just another game to be solved is a total trap—
Garrett (57:20): Yeah.
Chris (57:21): And obviously will likely have the opposite effect of what's intended. And I think that might be my favorite piece of advice from the classic Dale Carnegie, is, "Don't try to be someone who's interesting, just be interested in other people."
Garrett (57:37): Yes.
Chris (57:38): And again, it's not something that you can or should want to fake. You have to actually be looking for, "Hey, someone . . . Everyone has something to teach me. Everyone is an expert in something." And be curious, there's that—that's the process of discovery, is what is this person's superpower that they might not even know is a superpower?
Another piece of advice that I got early on that served me really well. You know, there's the whole like pickup scene, which is saying the right line, and what are the routines that you run through to get someone to fall in love with you? To take someone's advice, it's like . . . "Do I really want this person's life?" That's always a good criterion. And I thought a much better approach to dating, rather than "How do I get someone to love me?" is, "How do I become someone who others love?" And it's like, becoming the person who the person you want to date wants to date. And a lot of that is just coming back to working on yourself. There's no game to it. That is the game.
Garrett (58:46): Oh yeah. I love that. I mean I read that book, The Game, and I have talked with some peers who got into PUA, Pick Up Artistry, and the whole thing always just freaked me out, honestly. But you know, I love what you said, and I want to correlate it to what I think our biggest goal in life is, is to find and spend our life with one person successfully. And to me it's like, if I can do that well, I feel like my floor is an eight out of ten. And that's really a big part of how I think I've been fortunate enough to find my future wife (we're engaged), is I think I've put in the hard work to be a better person.
I used to say this thing to my friends. I used to say, "I don't want to date a girl like me. I want to date a girl who's way better than me." Right? I want to marry up, if you will. I don't really buy that working, like as a long-term marriage. You know, you're going to run into a lot of trouble. Oftentimes she's gonna realize she's too good for you, and the marriage is gonna fall apart. The only way I was going to be able to truly marry as spectacular a person as my fiancée is is to become a spectacular person myself. And I don't know if I am or not or whatever, but I do know that that is very much the goal and the focus. And you can't trick someone into thinking that. And it's like, if you're thinking, "Man, if this person only really knew me," you're probably on the wrong track.
Chris (01:00:32): I love this question from Mohammadamin, 'cause there's this notion in poker of the sole hero. Someone who overcame all the odds on their own and is now standing on the top. And it seems to me that that's such a misnomer—that great players, great people come up together. How have the people around you, how their mindsets and their ways of looking at the world rubbed off on you that's allowed you to become the person you are now?
Garrett (01:01:06): Yeah. I think I have a few different close friends and family members, and I'm taking a little bit from each of them. You know? But I didn't have like a crew, like many elite poker players do, where they study together forever. I never had that. I always just worked on my own, which is very likely not the best way to go about it. But you know, I've taken so much from my sister in terms of how to be just a really high-quality human being. You know? I've taken a lot from one of my best friends on how to just live a productive life each day, and specifically to show up each day. You know, a little bit of that.
And I have all sorts of role models from books. But that's kind of it. I've discussed this in another podcast, but the concept of anti-role models has been very big for me. There's a couple people who I'm very close with in my life—I think your listeners are getting the gist—in so many ways I wanted to make sure that my life was nearly the opposite of theirs. So I used their choices as fuel to make sure I never became them or like them or anything like that. And I think that's sort of related, to go full circle, with the identity sort of thing we discussed earlier. You know, I need to challenge myself. Not only like, "Am I the kind of person who does A and B and C?" but also, if not, then I'm this person who does, you know, X, Y, Z. So I kind of blend all that together to just stay very hungry each day.
Chris (01:02:55): I feel like I need to ask about that. There is a question here. So it's easy when you're . . . This one comes from DJ. So you know, it's easy when you're moving up the ranks and, "Hey, there's another limit to reach to stay hungry." But when you're playing the biggest games that you can play and you somewhat reach the top, that's a challenge, right? How do you avoid plateauing, becoming satisfied, becoming complacent? What is your key to staying hungry and continuing to grow?
Garrett (01:03:34): Yeah. You definitely need a 'why.' And oftentimes you need several 'why's. And in my case, it's a very challenging one. The first thing that has come to mind in recent years, every time I ask myself, is just the concept of giving. You know, and so “giving” I feel loosely goes to giving to people you know, friends, family, versus giving time, money, et cetera to sort of philanthropic organizations. I find those two concepts to be very different, and I would suggest your listeners to experiment with both, because they may connect quite a bit more with one than the other.
So you know, to a very large extent I earn to give. You know, whether it's give to friends and family, give to philanthropy that I care about these days, or even just give to my future children, grandchildren, et cetera. You know, it's not about me. And there's this deep awareness that I have no use for money as it relates to increasing the utility of my life at this point. So if I'm just trying to earn for earning's sake, and not understanding why, it's not going to work.
The other thing that I would say is . . . I like to gameify everything. You know, in the end, poker itself is a game, and earning money is a game, and let's face it. We live in America. Everyone's trying really fucking hard at this "let's make money" game. It doesn't even matter who you are, almost everyone's trying pretty hard at that one. To me, there's a satisfaction in going, "I'm not even playing for that. I'm just playing to beat you." You know, I'm just such a competitor that if you want to play me in a game, let's go. Let's battle. You know, 'cause like it's like we're here on Earth for what reason? For me, part of it's like, let's battle.
Chris (1:05:35): I think that's such a fun frame, because once something becomes a game, it becomes a little bit playful. It takes away all of the pressure, all of the life or death. It's, "Hey, let's explore what can happen within these rules which we've all agreed to play by." And a lot of people forget that they have agreed to play, that this finite game has become an infinite game for them. But at the beginning, like, you've agreed to play this game, and I think that a lot of people forget that and they lose sight of, "Hey, you can stop playing the capitalism game any time. No one's forcing you." And so if you're going to play, you might as well play well and you might as well enjoy it.
Garrett (01:06:21): That's right. These days poker is definitely a part-time role in my life. So you know, most of the games I'm playing in my life these days are completely unrelated to capitalism. But when I'm showing up to play that game, like, yeah. Let's do it. Like I know . . . Like especially in poker, man, there are so many incredibly super-thirsty guys, where the only thing that matters to them is trying to earn money. Like they have not much purpose or goals beyond that. I mean, it's obviously very satisfying to outwork and outplay someone with that sort of mindset, because I'm like, "You're not contributing to society anyway." You know? "The only thing you're doing with your life is trying to win the zero-sum game. And so like I couldn't feel better at beating you at it and then doing my part to make the world a better place in whatever very small way." You know?
Chris (01:07:16): Yeah. It reminds me of the concept of wu-wei, which is the art of not trying. That oftentimes the try-hards, the harder that you try, the worse the results. That you get in your own way.
Garrett (01:07:31): Right.
Chris (01:07:32): I think this is a great one to end on, and again, thank you so much, Garrett. This is such a pleasure. This one’s from Connor: "Poker parallels life so much. If you had to pick one, what's a big life lesson that you've taken away from your years in the game of poker?"
Garrett (01:07:49): Hmm. Good one. Tough one. Let me think about it just for a second. Um. Okay. I think I'll just use this one. So I'm planning my wedding right now. And I'm not a religious person in any way, but I was having a chat with my dad last night, and he was talking to me about, "Will you go ahead and break the glass when you get married?" That's a tradition in Jewish weddings, right? And it very loosely translates to, in life, in marriage, things are going to get fucked up, things are going to break. So let's just get this out of the way now, let's sort of face our first adversity right now, and let's break this glass. I think both in life and poker and marriage, I think an acceptance that life is very messy, that humans are very messy, and that shit is going to break all the time, and that it's not about trying to prevent the breaks, it's about picking up the pieces thereafter. In essence, it's about how are you going to handle adversity?
You know, and so you know, where I've made a lot of strides in my life is recognizing that when bad things happen, even really bad things happen, the mechanism that I have sort of impulsively now sort of kicks in, sort of related to how serious the issue or tragedy. So I know the worse an issue is, something snaps in me where I go, okay. I need to handle this with great care, with great effort, and just give it everything I've got to be able to overcome and move forward. And I mean, in poker you're losing almost half the hands you play. You know, and so if you're not able to deal with the adversity, whether it's calling a small river bet that's very small and you should be able to forgive yourself easier, or running that half-million dollar bluff that goes wrong, and it was so tragic that now maybe you have to play smaller stakes . . . Being able to handle that adversity, I think you can do anything in life, if you can do that. And if you're not good at that, as I wasn't in my twenties, like . . . your ceiling is so low.
Chris (01:10:27): Yeah. That seems like the ultimate meta-skill, is your ability to deal with adversity in an uncertain world where things are guaranteed to break. And it goes back to what you're saying about a lot of players and a lot of people living out of fear that things are going to break when they will, and understanding and anticipating that allows you to react and thrive into those situations, that the world being a bit fragile can actually be a personal advantage if you're prepared for it.
Garrett (01:11:00):Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. Your concept of 'anti-fragile' that you've taught me is critical in my life, for sure.
Chris (01:11:07): Garrett, thank you so much. As I said, this is truly an honor. Loved this conversation. I think you had a lot of wisdom for up-and-coming players and just people who want to live life's peace. Anything else you'd like to share with those who are listening? Anywhere you'd wanna direct people?
Garrett (01:11:26): You broke up for a second, but I think I got the question. I don't have anything to sell, I don't have any interest in making any money from any of this, but if you want to occasionally follow a few random things I might say, I have a Twitter, and it's @gmanpoker. That's it.
Chris (01:11:46): Awesome. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you, Garrett, for sharing. Would encourage you if you haven't already to subscribe to the Forcing Function newsletter. We do these Lunch Hours with amazing guests once a month, so if you stay in touch we can let you know when the next Lunch Hour is going to be. Just a reminder, we're going to be sending all of you guys the recording of this conversation on Monday, so keep an eye out for an email there. If you have any additional questions for me or Garrett, feel free to reply to that email, and I'll make sure they get to the right place. Thank you guys so much, signing off. See you guys next month. Thanks, Garrett.
Tasha (01:12:16): Thank you for listening to the Forcing Function Hour. At Forcing Function, we teach performance architecture. We work with a select group of twelve executives and investors to teach them how to multiply their output, perform at their peak, and design a life of freedom and purpose. Make sure to subscribe to Forcing Function Hour for more great episodes, or go to forcingfunctionhour.com to sign up for our newsletter so you can join us live.